Motherboard help

[Robert Davidoff]

Building a new computer... First one in about 3 years and I'm not too
current on hardware. I have always liked INTEL motherboards for their
stability and I am thinking about getting a D975XBX MB with a PENTIUM D 950
3.4GHZ EM64T DUAL CORE processor.

Any opinions on that choice or suggestions in any other directions. I am not
a gamer, but I do a fair amount of video editing and I consider myself a
power user in terms of running a number of programs at once and doing a lot
of graphics work. I am on a small network which I am in the processing of
upgrading to a gigabyte...

Any suggestions for ECC memory for this board?

Also looking at an ATI RADEON X1800 CROSSFIRE EDITION 512MB PCI EXPRESS for
the video card and would like some feedback on that as well....

Thanks in advance,

Bob

--
______________________________
S. Robert Davidoff, DMD, FACP
Boca Raton, Florida
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.dental-implants.com
http://www.dds-online.com
http://www.davidoffdental.com

 

[Dave]

Building a new computer... First one in about 3 years and I'm not too
current on hardware. I have always liked INTEL motherboards for their
stability and I am thinking about getting a D975XBX MB with a PENTIUM D
950 3.4GHZ EM64T DUAL CORE processor.

Any opinions on that choice or suggestions in any other directions. I am
not a gamer, but I do a fair amount of video editing and I consider myself
a power user in terms of running a number of programs at once and doing a
lot of graphics work. I am on a small network which I am in the processing
of upgrading to a gigabyte...

Any suggestions for ECC memory for this board?

Also looking at an ATI RADEON X1800 CROSSFIRE EDITION 512MB PCI EXPRESS
for the video card and would like some feedback on that as well....

Thanks in advance,

Bob

Oh boy. Ummmmmm, there is nothing wrong with using Intel processors, if you
really insist on doing so. The last three systems I've built (including
this one) were Intel P4 systems. So I have nothing against them. You are
looking at building a rather high-end multiprocessing multimedia machine,
though. You should be thinking AMD for the processor. Your video card
looks good, if a bit of overkill. (nothing wrong with that, ha ha)

But what the HECK do you need ECC memory for? Oh, the motherboard requires
it? Yet another reason to build an AMD system. (Your money could be better
spent elsewhere.) Unfortunately, crossfire motherboards aren't cheap, but
it would be silly to buy a crossfire video card without one.

Check out the following, if you are looking for rock-solid stability and
something that will do video editing and multi-tasking without choking:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136009
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227067 (TWO of
these)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817194003

That should be a good start. -Dave

 

[Thomas Jespersen]

Also looking at an ATI RADEON X1800 CROSSFIRE EDITION 512MB PCI EXPRESS for
the video card and would like some feedback on that as well....

When you say "video editing" do you mean 3D Rendering? If not I will agree
with Dave that this is overkill. If it is 3D Rendering it might be a good
solution, but for 2D work like Photoshop you can do with much less.

 

[Robert Davidoff]

No, I'm not doing any 3D editing, but I do a bit of video rendering... I
know it is overkill, but cost is not a factor and I enjoy having fast, solid
hardware to work with...

--
______________________________
S. Robert Davidoff, DMD, FACP
Boca Raton, Florida
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.dental-implants.com
http://www.dds-online.com
http://www.davidoffdental.com

 

[TheBitBopper]

Sounds a lot like the one I'd like to build. Again, maybe too much
video.
What I'm looking at is the P4-630 (or higher) on the Asus P5WD-2
running 2-4G of PC6400 dual channel DDR2. I saw a refurbished P5WD2 for
$120 on Pricewatch.com last week. Normally those vendors are asking
$170 for it.

The only thing that can be done on a computer is editing it's memory.
So you want it to be FAST! This approach will give you twice the
memory bandwidth of a Socket 939. No matter how fast the CPU/cache,
it's going to wait on every cache<>ram transaction, so this strategy
minimizes that bottleneck.

One of these days I'm going to track down a mobo that will deliver the
EE's GHZ FSB to PC8000 dual channel DDR2. TigerDirect is a great place
to get pictures and specs in an apples to apples format. I'd be looking
for a 955 or higher Northbridge chip.